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Saturday, 15 March 2008

Sabbatarian Patrick's Lutheran Charm

Jared Olar notes:I just noticed that this year Bob Thiel wasn't able to resist saying something about St. Patrick's Day. Back in March 2006 at Gary Scott's former XCG weblog, I shredded Bob Thiel's claims that St. Patrick was a proto-Armstrongist Sabbath-keeper, showing from St. Patrick's own words that he was a Trinitarian Catholic bishop (Google "Some Armstrongist Blarney" -- but you'll have to go to the cached pages). So the next year in March 2007, Bob Thiel "celebrated" St. Patrick's Day by complaining about St. Patrick being a pagan Trinitarian.But this year Bob is back to his previous pseudohistoricism -- St. Patrick and St. Columba and the Celtic Church in Scotland and Ireland were seventh-day Sabbatarians. (Don't be surprised if, as it was with his March 2007 anti-Patrick commentary, the historical sources he quotes -- well, actually he's just quoting another Armstrongist -- turn out to be misquotes and/or out-of-date scholarship.)Or maybe St. Patrick was a pagan Trinitarian Sabbath-keeper. . . .

One of Bob's sources (well, actually James McBride's sources, which Bob quotes) is interesting. James Moffatt is the guy behind the Moffatt Bible which bequeathed to us a peculiar fondness for calling God "the Eternal", and a top scholar in the creation of the 1952 Revised Standard Version. Is he misquoted?One source James and Bob don't cite is Dugger & Dodd, where I first encountered the Sabbatarian Patrick legend (p.236) as a callow youth. Moffatt is naturally miles ahead of those "authorities", though I'm with Jared in agreeing that the whole thing seems totally shonky.

Also on the Patrick theme: The only official observance on the Lutheran liturgical calendar that diverges from Catholic/Anglican tradition is Reformation Sunday, and flicking through Evangelical Lutheran Worship I can confirm that March 17 indeed commemorates Patrick, missionary to Ireland. So where did the larrikins at Old Lutheran dredge up "Lutheran Charm Day"? There's got to be potential here for COGish adaptation of the church calendar... the possibilities are endless.

35 comments:

As one who believes in the efficacy of the "7th Day Sabbath", I also enjoy studying the history of Sabbath keepers through time as well.

That said, I am often amused by folks who try to connect the dots of our present status to ANYONE who "just might have" stumbled onto the idea of a 7th Day Sabbath.

This is foolhardy. It assumes that the Sabbath is the primal "gateway" key linchpin to any validity as a Christian. Get that one doctrine right, and you magically are granted largesse into the special club.

Nothing can be further from the truth. Although there were Sabbatarians in history that exhibited signs of conversion, perseverance and faith, there are others who embraced bizaare concepts, or sexual practices and other cult like behavior.

One only needs to examine the present to see that within the Sabbatarian community there are indeed balanced, converted and loving leaders and people, as well as some real nut jobs, like Weinland, Pack, Flurry, Dave Smith, Israel Hawkins, David Koresh etc. The past is no different.

Whether Patrick was a Sabbatarian or not is really rather meaningless in the end. How far do you go down the ladder in evaluating his validity? Did he eat pork, did he go to Big Sandy TX for the FOT, was he a trinitarian, did he know about the "Missing Dimension in Sex"?? etc.

Kinship, brotherhood and heritage cannot be based on just a subset of doctrines. True conversion is a relationship with Jesus Christ, and the imbuing of the Holy Spirit.

Who are any of us to judge this? At the Lords Supper, the Bible implores US, ourselves, to examine whether we are of the faith or not. Not anyone else, not an authority figure, or doctrinal commitee, but you. Shouldnt we be as gracious with those in history, rather than empowering or disempowering an individual because they may or may not have "one doctrine" correct?

On the topic of "dr" Theil's scholarship, or lack thereof, I noted with interest Gavin's quote of a couple of weeks ago where "dr" Bob tells us he really does have a doctorate, and gave the name of the institution. Being a curious kind of guy, I wrote to the registrar of that online university. I asked for confirmation that "you know you" held a degree granted by that institution, what was the degree in, and what was the subject of his doctoral thesis. I have had no reply. Does that mean they never heard of him? One can only wonder.It would not be the first time a cogish guru claimed a phony title, like his mentor "dr" Spanky Merrydeath for instance.

"A History of the English Church and People" was written during Saxon times by Bede, the father of English history, in about 731.

Bede was a Catholic priest and early scholar who... "wrote two by books worthy of mention. For he translated the Gospel of Saint John into our language for the benefit of THE CHURCH OF GOD as far as the words but what are these among so many." The above was written by a friend and contemporary, Cuthwin, in 735 when Bede died.

Note the reference to "the Church of God".

Bede traces the gradual decline of the Celtic tribal and monastic system and it's suppression by the highly developed and centralized Roman Church.

The Celts were a stubborn people.

The Celts had their own brand of Christianity. They had wandering saints who used free-lance methods and who were very much at odds with Rome; the saints included Columba, Cuthbert, and Aidan. Patrick was in Ireland. David was in Whales and Cornwall. And Ninian went to the Picts.

The Celts refused to bow the knee to Rome.

In chapter 19 Bede writes that Pope Honorious "...wrote to the Scots whom he learned to be in error about the observance of Easter."

The pope wrote that the Celtic Churches "... are attempting to revive a new heresy from an old one, contrary to the orthodox faith, and that in the dark cloud of their ignorance they refuse to observe our Easter on which Christ was sacrificed, arguing that it should be observed with the Hebrew Passover on the fourteenth day of the moon."

There is a recurring theme in Bede's work; orthodoxy combating the Celts keeping Passover on the 14th. Bede mentions it in chapter after chapter of his 731 CE history!

It is one of the main controversies of Bede's day.

This is pure "Church of God" stuff.

The stubborn Celts were taught by their saints to keep Passover on the 14th and not keep Easter!

Many of these early Celts also kept Sabbath. This was LONG BEFORE THERE WERE PURITANS.

Many of the Celts held to a 14th Passover, refused to keep Easter and probably kept Sabbath. These were folks in "Devon, Cornwall, Wales, and south-west Scotland".

Reading you Irish Green entry set my mind at ease. One upon a time I and company entered through the doors to sit in darkened rented premises and listened to the TRUTH. We came not because they made us but because they kept the 7th day observance. Here a little there and soon I knew that they were fencing us in a pasture where stale waters were abundant and the pasture withering, shepherds were camouflaged chameleons seemingly preaching eternal ever after.

Apologies... this comment has now reached its true home, transferred from all that scientific confusion.

Regarding St P: I see from the article that there are several citations from important authors who corroborate that the Celtic Church was Sabbatarian - later swamped by Roman tradition.

A previous comment scorned the pre-Nicene church - which was (fading) Sabbatarian. But surely tradition must not conflict with the authentic revelation from the Twelve and Psul? Otherwise believe anything - or like our other Paul, nothing.

"So the next year in March 2077, Bob Thiel "celebrated" St. Patrick's Day by complaining about St. Patrick being a pagan Trinitarian."

I would have thought Jesus would have returned long before the year 2077!! And to think Bob Thiel is still around then, unless it's the millenium, and he was resurrected... But then why still celebrate St Patricks day during the millenium? Hmmm....

challenge to theil.. go into a true 'irish protestant' bar wearing green on March 17 and wish them a happy st. Pat's day and ask for green beer. If you have any teeth left, and any fingers unbroken... write a synopsis on it...

Armstrongism has sought to become legitimate through creating a history for itself. On the one hand, HWA had to explain why nobody had ever heard his particular message in the past. So he innovated the idea that the church had been underground for 18 and half centuries.

On the other hand, he had to demonstrate that the Armstrongite church was present throughout that 18 and a half centuries because Christ stated that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against it.

So, walking this tightrope, a history had to be constructed that found the Armstrongite church present down through the centuries but never in any great force.

Hence, every possible scrap of historical evidence that even remotely sounded like Armstrongism has been seized and waved like a banner.

But it is not unusual that someone in Christian Church History would worship on the Sabbath. There are even Christians who do that now. It does not mean that these Sabbatarians were card-carrying Armstrongites. That would be a considerably more involved demonstration.

My guess is that if you searched historical resources for a church that kept the Sabbath and also believed in two separate gods with a bodily existence inside of time and space, you would find nothing.

HWA manufactured his religion out of whole cloth, St. Patrick's Sabbatarianism notwithstanding.

Even the most cursory research will show that every church and cult, including Armstrongism considers itself to be "the church of God". For all we know Bede was referring to the Catholics. In actuality, the Church of God died with the first century Christians hence the prediction that "even the gates of hell, (ie death) would not prevail against it. The church will be revived when Christ returns. In the meantime we have every wishful thinker in the world thinks he/she is a part of the true church. Also, even the most rudimentary bible scholar knows that the sabbath was the sign for the adherers of the old covenant. The new covenant has a completely different sign.

BTW. Jonah was in a whale, but I don't recall David ever being in one :-)Bob E.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant. - Helen Keller

'In chapter 19 Bede writes that Pope Honorious "...wrote to the Scots whom he learned to be in error about the observance of Easter."

The pope wrote that the Celtic Churches "... are attempting to revive a new heresy from an old one, contrary to the orthodox faith, and that in the dark cloud of their ignorance they refuse to observe our Easter on which Christ was sacrificed, arguing that it should be observed with the Hebrew Passover on the fourteenth day of the moon." '

So for all of you who think it doesn't matter...

Here you have the witness of long silenced voices of Celtic saints.

They kept Passover and not Easter, and some kept Sabbath and not Sunday.

There were 7th day Sabbath keeping Christians in Scotland prior to the Roman invasion of the British Isles. This greatly puzzled the missionaries from Rome who came later.

National Geographic did a story years ago on the Sabbath keepers of modern Scotland. They're small in numbers but they do exist. I don't recall them tracing their religion to St Patrick, but its been a while since I read the article.

I doubt they had much of anything to do with the Millerite movement in the United States that the WCG, SDA and JWs sprang from. That's simply wishful thinking.

It is interesting that the article never mentions any Armstrongite Sabbatarians. Could it be because no Armstrongites are legitimate descendants of Sabbatarians????????????

All of Thiel's rhetoric, Flurry and Meredith still cannot validate any of their COG mythology that they still hold on to. I still remember the days when the Waldenses were the one and only true descendants of Armstrongism. That has been proven totally false in the last couple of decades. They were not Sabbatarians.

I've been holding my breath on this one for years. What if a sabbatarian black tribe in Africa were discovered by National Geographic, and it became known that they also kept all of the holydays, the levitical dietary laws, their women did not wear makeup, the tribe tithed, they were looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ within the near future, and the chief tribal warrior practiced government from the top down. Not only this, but they could trace their roots clear back to the evangelizing work of the Ethiopian eunuch during apostolic times.

Does anyone here believe that the Armstrongites would acknowledge or embrace them? No, I can see one of the micro splinters seeking to annex them, swelling up member population, but do we honestly think they'd be documented in the modern day equivalent of the booklet "A True History of the True Church?"

One more iron to the fire here...what about that nomadic tribe in India that claims they're descendants of Manasseh? (I think that was the tribe they were claiming heritage to.) They keep the Judaic law, and have some of the oldest Torah scrolls known, other than the Dead Sea ones of course.

I don't have time to dig up the site right now, but there is quite a bit about it on the Internet.

Anonymous: I do not like the heretical religious philosophy (I won't honor that belief system with the term theology) of the Armstrongite Church. I do not like the behavior of many people who are Armstrongites. But I do not harbor a hatred for these people per se.

And you and I both know that Armstrongites have made an avocation of deriding people of various races and religions. It has long been the Church of Sarcasm. I don't think I need to quote chapter and verse to you on that.

What about The Church of God and Saints of Christ founded in 1896 by African American William Saunders Crowdy? They are a Sabbatarian church community with no ties to the SDAs/COG7D/WCG line of succession.

"We can therefore say very clearly that the Waldensians were not Seventh-day Sabbath keepers and they were not persecuted for keeping Saturday as the Sabbath! Thy were persecuted, [from 1532 (when they joined the Reformation - Angrogna Synod) to 1848 (when they received religious freedom)], because of their Reformed-Calvinistic faith in Christ."

An anonymous Armstrongist (?) said: "A History of the English Church and People" was written during Saxon times by Bede, the father of English history, in about 731.

It was certainly written in A.D 731.

Bede was a Catholic priest and early scholar who... "wrote two by books worthy of mention. For he translated the Gospel of Saint John into our language for the benefit of THE CHURCH OF GOD as far as the words but what are these among so many." The above was written by a friend and contemporary, Cuthwin, in 735 when Bede died.

Note the reference to "the Church of God".

Wrong. That's a quote from CUTHBERT'S letter on the illness and death of St Bede. The incipit of Cuthbert's letter reads, "To his most beloved fellow-teacher in Christ Cuthwin, Cuthbert his fellow-disciple wishes eternal salvation in God." You have confused the author of the letter for the addressee.

Anyway, what's your point? St. Bede was a Catholic monk, his friend and disciple Cuthbert was a Catholic monk. Are you suggesting that Cuthbert was a proto-Armstrongist, not a Catholic?

By the way, the Sherley-Price translation of Cuthbert's epistle renders your quoted passage somewhat differently. It says, "In these days, besides our lessons and the chanting of psalms, (Bede) was much busied with two short works which are specially worthy of memory: the translation into our own language for THE CHURCH'S benefit of the Gospel of St. John from the beginning until the passage where it says: 'But what are these among so many?', . . . ."

Now, for the benefit of which Church do you think that translation was made, keeping in mind that St. Bede and Cuthbert were Catholic Benedictine monks?

The Celts had their own brand of Christianity. They had wandering saints who used free-lance methods and who were very much at odds with Rome; the saints included Columba, Cuthbert, and Aidan. Patrick was in Ireland. David was in Whales (sic) and Cornwall. And Ninian went to the Picts.

Speaking of "whales," your comments are a whale of a tale. Cuthbert was English, not Celtic. Also, the early Celtic saints and missionaries were nowhere as "free-lance" as you suggest. After all, Patrick was sent to evangelise the Irish by Pope Celestine, and St. Adamnan, disciple of St. Columba, wrote a Life of St. Columba that shows him to have been a Catholic, not a proto-Armstrongist. St. Bede, a Catholic, expressed deep admiration for St. Aidan, so the Celtic Christians must not have been THAT much at odds with Rome.

The Celts refused to bow the knee to Rome.

Well, except for the fact that they acknowledged Roman primacy and did, after some resistance, bow the knee to Rome, yes, they refused to bow the knee to Rome. ;-) The monastery at Iona, for example, accepted the canonical rules for calculating Pascha/Easter in A.D. 715.

In chapter 19 Bede writes that Pope Honorious (sic) "...wrote to the Scots whom he learned to be in error about the observance of Easter."

To be accurate, that is from chapter 19 of BOOK TWO of St. Bede's history, which has five books, each of which has a chapter 19. Also, "Scots" in St. Bede's history refers to the Gaels, the people of Ireland, some of whom had planted a colony in Argyllshire (Dal Riada). Because of that colony of "Scots" (Irish), eventually the whole of northern Britain came to be called Scotia or Scotland.

The pope wrote that the Celtic Churches "... are attempting to revive a new heresy from an old one, contrary to the orthodox faith, and that in the dark cloud of their ignorance they refuse to observe our Easter on which Christ was sacrificed, arguing that it should be observed with the Hebrew Passover on the fourteenth day of the moon."

Pope Honorius did NOT says that "the Celtic Churches" were attempting to revive a new heresy. Rather, he said, "CERTAIN PERSONS IN YOUR PROVINCE are attempted to revive a new heresy . . . ." St. Bede then comments, "From the beginning of this letter it is evident that this heresy had arisen in very recent times and that the error was restricted to a limited number of persons in the nation." So, according to Pope Honorius and St. Bede, it was not the general custom of the Celtic Catholics to celebrate Pascha on Nisan 14. However, the Celtic Catholics did follow a different system of calculating Pascha/Easter than did the rest of the Catholic Church in the West.

There is a recurring theme in Bede's work; orthodoxy combating the Celts keeping Passover on the 14th. Bede mentions it in chapter after chapter of his 731 CE history!

Wrong. There is no recurring theme in St. Bede's work of orthodoxy combatting Celts who kept Passover on Nisan 14. St. Bede is very clear about the Paschal customs of the Celtic Catholic Church. For example, he writes this in Book 3 Chapter 4, of the monastery founded by St. Columba at Iona:

"In observing the great Feast of Easter they followed doubtful rules; for being so isolated from the rest of the world, there was no one to acquaint them with the synodical decrees about the keeping of Easter. . . . They held to their own manner of keeping Easter for another 150 years, until the year of our Lord 715. In that year the most reverend and holy father, Bishop Egbert, an Englishman, who had spent many years of exile in Ireland for love of Christ, and was most learned in the scriptures and renowned for lifelong holiness, came and corrected their error, and they changed to the right canonical customs for observing Easter. This error was that they kept Easter not, as some supposed, on the fourteenth day of the moon, as do the Jews, but on the Sunday of the wrong week."

Again, St. Bede says this in Book 3 Chapter 17, of the great Celtic saint Aidan:

"He always kept Easter, not as some mistakenly suppose, on the fourteenth moon whatever the day was, as the Jews do, but on the Lord's Day falling between the fourteenth and twentieth days of the moon."

A few lines above that, St Bede says of St. Aidan: "I greatly admire and love all these things about Aidan, because I have no doubt that they are pleasing to God; but I cannot approve or commend his failure to observe Easter at the proper time, whether he did it through ignorance of the canonical times or in deference to th customs of his own nation. But this in him I do approve, that in keeping his Easter he believed, worshipped, and taught exactly what we do, namely the redemption of the human race through the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven of the Man Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man," and further on St. Bede says that Aidan believed "like the rest of Holy Church" that the general resurrection of the dead would take place on a Sunday, just as Jesus was raised on a Sunday. Doesn't sound like St. Aidan was much of a seventh-day Sabbatarian proto-Armstrongist.

One reason that many mistakenly believe the Celtic Catholics were Quartodecimans is that when the Celtic Catholics tried to defend their method of calculating Pascha at the Synod of Whitby in A.D. 664, they erroneously thought their method of calculation was the same as the one used by the Quartodeciman saints Polycarp and Polycrates. But we know that's not true. The Celtic method of calculation was not Quartodeciman and did NOT, contrary to what the Irish saint Colman claimed at Whitby, originate with the Apostle St. John. Rather, the Celts, being isolated from the rest of the Church, continued to use an earlier method of calculating Easter Sunday -- they hadn't "got the memo" that the Church had later modified her rules for calculating Easter Sunday. At the Synod of Whitby, it was determined that the Celts needed to bring their method into line with that of the rest of the Catholic Church in the West. After some resistance, that is exactly what they did.

Another dispute between the Celts and their fellow Catholics had to do with priestly tonsure. The Celts had their own style of tonsure that set their priests apart from other priests. At Whitby, they were told to adopt the "Roman" custom of tonsure. Again, after some resistance, the Celtic Catholics did adopt the Roman custom.

Many of these early Celts also kept Sabbath.

I've not found any evidence that any of these early Celts kept the seventh-day Sabbath. I'd be happy to see evidence to the contrary. You'd think St. Bede would have mentioned it at least once, if any of these early Celtic saints were Sabbath-keepers. In fact, he'd have been pretty upset about it and would have denounced it. And yet the issue of Sabbath-keeping is never mentioned anywhere his history.

Bamboo Bends said: There were 7th day Sabbath keeping Christians in Scotland prior to the Roman invasion of the British Isles. This greatly puzzled the missionaries from Rome who came later.

Julius Caesar made two abortive invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 B.C. Caligula made preparations for another invasion, but, being Caligula, he instead had the legions collect pretty seashells along the English Channel coast of Gaul and then sent them all home. Finally, in A.D. 43, Claudius Caesar sent Rome's legions into Britain and began the Roman conquest of the island. Rome's armies did not make any forays into Scotland for about another 40 years. There is neither historical nor archaeological record of seventh-day Sabbatarian Christians in Britain during that time, nor does history say anything about Catholic missionaries in Scotland being puzzled to find seventh-day Sabbatarians already there.

I don't know if you are aware, but HWA is dead. By digging up his bones, dressing them in royal robes and dragging them through the streets, you are simply showing yourselves to be the equivalent of petty popes in times gone by. I would spend my time correcting your foolishness, but it would be a mere exercise in futility and casting pearls before swine to be trampled. I will give you one piece of advice, however: study the word of God on your knees and ask God first to grant you repentance for your hateful attitude, then look into the scriptures. You are in need of correction, but you will not accept it because of your vanity. So be it. I pray that you will change your hearts now, while there is still time. Otherwise, you have been warned and in the day of judgment, you are without excuse.

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